Category Archives: garden

Murder Tree

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There is a tree in our front yard that is a home to crows, the crows fly in and out of the tree all day.  During the school term the crows steal food from the grounds, they steal yogurt containers, muesli bars, and tuck shop paper bags.  All of the rubbish from the food ends up under the tree.  But then something started to happen, there were dead animals under the tree every day for 5 days.  A rat, another rat, a top knot pigeon, a lorikeet, another rat.  I started to expect a corpse under the tree after a few days.

I buried all of the animals under the tree in among all of the litter under the tree.  It’s a huge pine so there are heaps of needles and dirt underneath to bury the animals.

After that first 5 days we’ve only seen a few more dead animals under the tree.  Mostly old ones, like half mummified rats and bird parts. Today I was reminded of all of the animals the showed up under the tree over that week after my partner mowed under the tree uncovering the poorly buried bodies (it’s super dry under the tree and hard to dig up).

As I have a bit of a collections of bones and body bits the corpses under the tree don’t bother me and  I can easily bury them when they do show up.  We don’t think the crows were actually killing the the animals but that the rats were poisoned (there were heaps of dead rats in the area at the time) and that a cat originally killed the birds and the crows stole the bodies.

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Bird wing from the top knot dove

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Rat skull

$70 challenge update

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It’s Friday and we’ve spent $61.41.  I don’t think we need to buy anything else this week. If we do it’ll be a visit to the fruit shop.

We’ve been to Aldi twice to pick up general groceries.  Cheese, bread, milk, muesli, etc. We even bought a brownie mix from Aldi and I made that yesterday.  Aldi brownie mix is $2.99 and is really yummy for a packet mix. Making brownies from scratch is actually quite costly as it has so much sugar, eggs and chocolate in it.  We bought beef mince at Coles which for the 2 of us is 2 meals, 2 left overs.  It’s $7 a pack for the 4 star stuff.  I made Taco’s last night and we’re having the left over’s tonight.  I chucked 75g of red lentils into the Taco mix (as well as lots of veg).  Adding lentils adds protein and is also part of a serve of fruit/veg and a meat substitute.  I think it’s something I’ll be doing a lot more.

For the taco meal we used an Old El Paso box, I only ever buy these when they are half price.  I can’t remember the exact price but its around $3.25.  This has the soft taco’s, seasoning and salsa.  Of course you need mince, or a meat substitute& some veg (onions, grated carrots, grated zucchini).  I made a tomato salsa mix to add to the Taco’s.  We grow tomatoes so I had heaps to use.  I also love picking green tomatoes for salsa.

Salsa
Tomatoes cut into little bits, mix of red and green if possible
Capsicum
Salt
Sugar
Splash of Apple cider vinegar
Pepper

We recently tried the Lyttos Greek Yog from Aldi and it’s really yummy, and cheap!  We used the yogurt as a sour cream substitute as we always throw out sour cream left overs.  It was pretty yummy.  I think this yogurt will be really versatile for sweet and savoury meals.  We don’t eat yogurt by the bowl full but usually have it in smoothies or a spoonful here and there.

Andrew, my partner, has made some notes of what we’ve eaten and thinks that between us we’re having $8-$12 of food between us a day.  I’ll later do some posts telling you what kinda things we’re eating and what we’re buying. This is already long enough!

How to Pickle Beetroot

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So, for those that don’t know the Beetroot you buy in the supermarket that is in tins and jars is pickled.  You might be reading this and saying “well that’s obvious,” but I’m telling you because a lot of people I told that I was pickling beetroot did not know.

I’d been pickling the odd beetroot here and there  but on a solo trip to the fruit shop my partner decided to buy about 5 kg’s of beets.  We often head to our fruit shop, Rochedale Markets, and come home with large bags of stuff.  We once bought 12kg of lady finger banana’s for $5.  All of our family benefit from that and I ate so many banana’s!

Back to the Beetroot.  So, at first I’m like FML, I don’t feel like pickling that many beetroot and left them sit on the bench for a couple weeks.  Beets have pretty good longevity so they were still looking fine when I eventually did these 5 jars.  There are still about 1/3 of the beetroot left.

Ingredients
Fresh Beetroot
1 tablespoon Salt
2 tablespoons Sugar
750ml Apple Cider Vinegar
300ml water

Specific Tools
Glass Jars, sterilised
Measuring jug

Peel your beetroot and slice.  If you have large beetroots (too big for the jar) quarter them.

Boil your beetroot for about 3-5 minutes. It gets a bit softer with 5 minutes, or 3 minutes for crisper beets.

Fill your jars with the boiled beets.  FYI, the boiled beets stained my hands a horrendous dark brown so wear gloves if you have a job where people might see (and judge) your hands, they look disgusting.

Boil the Salt, Vinegar, Sugar and Water. I like to reserve red liquid that the beets are boiled in (about 100ml) so my vinegar mix is red but this is not necessary.  Also, if you need less liquid just use the same ratio’s for the smaller amounts.

To make it easy for you pour your boiled liquid into a jug and then fill out your beetroot jars. Put the lids on nice and tight.  The buttons on the jars might pop themselves down once the jars cool but if not you can press them down during the process and they’ll stay popped in.

Allow to cool and refrigerate.  If you are a slowpoke to eat things you ma want to put on the date you made it.  They don’t last long enough in my fridge to bother.

Homemade pickled beets really are yummy so if you’ve been thinking about it (and looking for a recipe) just do it! You won’t regret your pickled beets.

Bees!

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We’ve had our vege garden for about a year now.  In that time we’ve had a bumper crop of Cucumbers (there are probably still 12+ jars of pickles in the fridge!), Corn, Radishes, Kohl Rabi, Potatoes, Wasabi Lettuce, Bok Choi, assorted herbs and Rocket.  I’m sure we’ve grown other things but I can’t remember them all!  (Oh, Tomatoes, I forgot Tomatoes.  We had so many tomatoes!)

I’ve loved having Rocket in the garden as I could go out and pick leaves whenever I wanted and Rocket is so yummy in salads and on sandwiches.  About 6 weeks ago it started to grow long stalks and get flower buds.  They are now about 60 cms tall covered in flowers and we’ve also got seed pods forming (yay!)  I’m still picking Rocket to eat but I think this crop is almost done with.

Something I didn’t expect was how much the native bees would love the Rocket flowers! They are swarming over them.  I stood out there yesterday to snap some pictures so my partner could see how many bees there were.  As the sun soon disappeared and so did the bees so I was out at the right time.

We’d love to get a bee hive eventually.  I’ve always loved bugs and would love to have a hive and learn more and see more of them.  If you’re after a hive here’s a great resource, Aussie Bee.

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Best Chicken Burger

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Have you ever tried the Kentucky Burger from KFC?  This is a (mostly) home-made burger similar to the Kentucky Burger, but much better.

The roll is one of those squishy pre-packed things.

We made the coleslaw.  It’s cabbage (we use sugarloaf), carrot, red onion, radish, kohl rabi and sometimes snow peas. Coleslaw dressing is usually just the Coles brand one.

Next it’s chicken pieces.  I just get the crumbed Breasts or Tenders from Coles meat dept. I HATE crumbing meat so just buy it pre-crumbed and oven bake.

Then cheese.  Aldi cheese slices. 1 or 2, whatever you like.

Bacon is optional and is on the KFC burger but I find it gets lost in all the rest flavours of this burger.

Also add BBQ sauce.  I like the Beerenberg Smokey Bourbon Sauce but just regular BBQ is also good.

And that’s the best burger!

 

 

Nasturtiums

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Do you grow Nasturtiums?  Do your grow them on purpose? Do you eat them, give them to your birds, or just like the wildlife they bring to the garden?

I first add Nasturtiums to the garden a few years ago after collecting seeds while out walking.  After throwing them in I had to wait another 9 months for their season to come back around (late Autumn/Winter) and we had orange and red ones.  Since then I have collected seeds whenever I can.  To date I have 6 colours, with a couple of varieties (as far as I can tell).  There is the classic orange which has the long vines that go wild.  This one usually grows around the chook pen but didn’t this year.   I’m not sure why, wondering if the weather was too warm for too long?  This year a new orange popped up, a darker orange, a really lovely colour, it is a short little bushy plant.  Another new one, a mix between yellow and orange, in a stripey sort of petal has grown.  And, the one I have been waiting for for years (I grabbed some seeds 2 seasons ago) is the yellow! There is also the dark red and the rusty orange.  This year the apricot coloured one hasn’t grown.

I really love the light scent of the flowers and keep them on my desk.